the day my eyes opened
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: As Sasuke gets closer and closer to finding Itachi, the more his memories and present body are decaying at the same time. (Note: Itachi and Sasuke pairing)


**fandom: Naruto**  
**title: the day my eyes opened.**  
**pairing: Sasuke + Itachi**  
**rating: pg - 13**  
**description – As Sasuke gets closer and closer to finding Itachi, the more his memories and present body are decaying at the same time.**

**Disclaimer – Naruto isn't mine.**

**the day my eyes opened.  
By miyamoto yui**

You may think I am over-reacting, but I woke up today because I knew something was wrong. I could feel that my own heartbeat was off. I only experience this in the morning, before the day begins, before the ray of dawn touches the curtains of leaves hanging above my head, blocking the heat from my cold, almost dead body.

I cannot describe it to you, but I know that it is there. The irregularity in a single heartbeat gives something tangible and more than the feeling of fear.

And it isn't about death at all. It is the fact that my life begins every morning like this.

I do not listen to the weather or feel the sun anymore to wake up.  
It is the Duduuumdum. A murmur. Prolonged. A split-second too long.

Yet, it shouldn't disturb me so, should it? Once life is given, it cannot be taken back. Even if your own mother has given you her own blood, you are still separate from her. Isn't that why you need that membrane to protect you?

Her own body attacks her own creation of life.

And so my own body mutates of its own volition. My soul somehow becomes warped because of it.  
But that did not start just now. It started ever since my eyes opened.

Ever since Memories could be remembered inside my head.

_It was your face I first saw when I was three. You didn't apologize as you held me upside down by my sandal almost slipping off my foot as you swung me cruelly in the air.  
I thought it was a game. I didn't know it was jealousy._

_But I didn't know I was the result of it, not the unreasonable causes that reflected unto me._

This was Time when I found out "what you saw with your eyes weren't the emotions you felt inside your heart."  
It seems so stupid now when I think about it. After all, I sound so childish. Yes, after trying to attempt to kill my best friend and all. You think you'd grow up just a bit when you tore your own soul out to be eaten by the vultures of guilt.

When you're caught between 'before' and 'after', there is no middle. You grow up not knowing any sense of time. There are only two options: You (the cloak of red) and Him (the caution of orange).

There is no room for 'me'. I exist in pieces between the two of Them.

Begrudgingly, these are the only options I'll let myself see. The rest of the world doesn't exist. The world will make my feelings impure, stain them in a color that is deeper than blood or the red of your Sharingan.

_"Ever since you came." It wasn't a question. It wasn't a statement or comment that started into something else. It just 'was'._

_We looked at each other eye-to-eye. You looked at me, upside down. Impassionedly, unemotionally. Stern, but not listlessly dead. Yet._

_I blinked at you and despite the fact that I should have been scared, I lifted up my hands to touch your face. It was so frigid, as if you already dipped yourself into the river that you'd always stared at so intently. Yes, even though it didn't seem to be moving, just like a mirror._

_My fingers felt all tingly._

_You turned your head slightly to the right as if being touched was disgusting. Your eyes wandered everywhere but into mine. It was like you weren't listening to me anymore.  
My pulse weakened. I thought I was dying the moment Memories could be remembered.  
_

Even when we were together, you always looked at me as if I were a waste of time. You'd rather have been doing something else.

Yes, each time I felt sad that way. I would be swallowed by the emptiness that seemed to become bigger every time you looked away from me. Even if it seemed pathetically dumb, I became aware of the emotion of jealousy.

I wanted you to stop training. It took time away from the both of us.

It took you away on missions.  
It took you far away from yourself.

Somehow, when you came back, you were stepping further and further away from me. It was a circle of life that seemed to make a barrier against me entering it.

_"What do you want?" your eyes said as you turned away from me with the moonlight bathing you to the point I thought you'd disappear while you were taking off your shirt. You threw your ratty pants towards me, thinking I'd jump away.  
I looked down at my feet. I could feel the crispiness of fresh mud crumbling onto my skin._

_"Just because we are in the same room doesn't mean I don't get any privacy," you said aloud. I was disturbed by the fact that you were talking to me._

_It was scarier than the silence that always stood between us, as thick as the mud at the edge of the river we always looked upon._

_He didn't turn his head. He did this all with his back towards me.  
_

I thought of the mirror in my own room. It was a gift you gave me from your first mission. Every morning it would greet me as I saw the traces of you within my own face.  
Someday, I too would look tired of this world.

And yet, the anger deep inside of me kept me from crying.

But the day you left me shattered, you turned away then too. It was not something I could understand then…

_The day my eyes opened._

_I looked at you as you held me in the air. As a child, I couldn't distinguish between the truth and reality. Lies did not exist, especially when it was within the existence of 'Aniki' in my mind.  
Tears started to well, and gravity took them down._

_Upside down, I watered the grass of the forest._

_I turned red and wriggled around because I was so embarrassed. In front of my Aniki, I too must have been strong. He wouldn't respect a weakling.  
Gently, he put his arm on my back and put me right side up. I sat down and pouted while looking at him with red eyes._

_"This is yours." His face looked as if it were mad as he put on a necklace over my head with one hand._

_It was a purple protection charm from his last mission._

_I looked up at him with wide eyes._

_Weeks later, almost as if in a sorry…_

_"Here," he said while walking through the living room with our dad beaming. Nonchalantly, he put the box of manjyuu on the table. Then, he nodded his head to change his clothes.  
For the first time, he was back from a mission during the middle of the day._

_"AH! My favorite!" I shouted as I hugged the box despite the fact that it should have been shared. My father gave me an eye and my mother laughed._

_These small scenes of indirect gifts given with a gruff repeated over and over until that day…_

_"Don't ever look back." His words entered my mind as I ran down the wickedly dark streets, trying to get away from the brother that I'd loved so much. The more it echoed into my ears, my heart beat in terror.  
_

But as the years went by, I regretted it. My brother always gave me what I wanted. He spoiled me with meaningful trinkets and unsaid compliments.  
I watched him always pushing me away so that I could find something that I could enjoy for myself and not because someone told me to.

_That day I ran away, I could feel from the bottom of my soul. The words he couldn't ever say to anyone: "Please save me. Let me keep one thing just for myself. I want to be selfish."  
_  
I just wasn't strong enough for that responsibility yet.

I began to understand it the day that Naruto beat back into me the feelings of being with other people, what it meant to care for another person. And with my own hands, I had wanted to kill him to gain the power that stood between my brother and me.

I cannot reach for either one.

I get up as I feel the wind press against the skin over my heart. The chill goes up my sleeved arms, touching the marks of where I was changing into a monster. The remains penetrate deep into the nerves of my red eye, the one that refuses to cry.

I am decaying faster than I thought I would.

Though I do not ever know where to find you, your words always catch up to me through the wind.  
Our blood is one and the same. We called out to one another like vampires and answer with unfinished echoes.

No words needed to be said.

I open my eyes to see my sandals needing to be tossed and changed along the way. I almost wanted to laugh. Little by little, I left a trail of myself to be chased after.

Why is it that everyday that leads to 'tomorrow' is a step towards the 'past' for you and me? In order to protect the one you cared for the most, why was it that 'strength' led you further away?

Please wait for me. I am not coming to kill you because you killed everyone.  
I don't want you to wander aimlessly anymore.

You always had me.  
You'll always have me.

_"What is your dream, Aniki?" I asked him as he sat by the river all alone. As if to test me, you got up and ran to the top of the Konoha monument.  
Hours later, I looked down at the lights of the village right next to you. You wiped my sweat away as you sighed deeply._

_That was the first time I saw you smile.  
It was the last one I'd ever see._

Somehow, even though I want to imagine it now, it's faded with no new memory to layer upon it. There were no colors in the darkness, just the white of your teeth.

White, the absence of all color.

I'm sure I ran away that day knowing that I feel the same way about you as I do now. Though we are bonded by blood, it's stronger through grief. It is secured by punishment.

We have not ever held hands, even in helping each other in training.  
We have not ever hugged, even if your back was always open for me to do so.  
We have not ever kissed, even if your face was always right in front of mine to tempt me.

Yet, I know everything about you. You know everything about me because you are in the shadows watching.

But one day, I will do what you couldn't do: I will cross that barrier and touch you the way I've always wanted to. And it'll be all right.

We will save ourselves while the world can say we're already damned anyway.

_That day on the cliff with the wind blowing, my heart beat a little irregularly. And you quietly said, "I just want peace. For things to stay as they are now."  
"But that's so boring," I answered, almost whining._

_"You'll understand when you come after me again."  
"Huh?"  
The wind became harder and almost took me away, but you reached out your hand to catch me._

_In that split second, your eyes told me when you looked down at me, "Not even the wind can take you away from me..._

_...because I took your wings away so that you wouldn't go back to where you came from."  
_

With your voice fresh in my head, I lift up my head to push myself into the melting, sweltering sunlight.

I command the people around me, "It's time to go."

**Owari.**

**Author's note: ** And so, my obsession with Itachi and Sasuke continues. I think it's because they remind me of Subaru and Seishirou in a way.

I hope you enjoyed it!

Love,  
Yui

**6/22/2007 5:41:40 AM – Los Angeles**  
**6/22/07 9:41PM - Tokyo**


End file.
